Page 47 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

My steps grow clumsy, distracted, and Ren wrests back control from me, effortlessly stepping back into the man’s role and steering me around and around the tables. Circles around circles. I think I’m going to be sick.

“That table over there,” he says, nodding his head towards a corner booth, undistinguishable from any other. “That’s where we sat on New Year’s, when the ball was dropping. Where you said you only had one resolution. Do you remember it?”

“Of course I do. I said—” Why does it feel harder to say now than it did then? “—I said that I was going to kiss you. That you had ten seconds left to get away from me.”

“And that all of New York was counting.”

Did I say that? I don’t remember it that clearly now.

“I think about that moment a lot. What might have changed if I had done something different in those ten seconds, the whole city counting down to the moment that would change everything for me.”

Our motions jerk as we misstep, lose the rhythm, growing almost violent. Ren is stronger than me by multitudes. There’s muscle and anger under that fitted suit, and he uses both to steer me around the tables again and again. I try to keep up, clinging to him now in the same way that he is clinging to me.

“Nothing would have changed,” I tell him. “What could have?” My father would still give his orders. His parents would have still been in that fire. What does that have to do with us?

“Everything would have changed.”

I shake my head. He’s wrong. Our love was not the only butterfly that could have flapped its wings and changed the course of history. There are a thousand innocent little things that could have gone differently and changed the trajectory of our lives. Why blame our relationship?

But Ren is sure of it, and more than sure, he is angry about it. Suddenly, our veering, tumbling dance pins me up against the booth we sat in all those years ago. The table’s edge pressesagainst my back. Ren towers over me, pinning me there as if he’s caught me all over again. He’s so close, leaning in, until the past becomes a flimsy, transparent sheen between us. I feel it, hear it. The silent bar screams in my memory: “5, 4, 3, 2—!”

I had kissed him first.

What kind of fireworks would it set off if I kissed him now?

I don’t find out. This time, Ren kisses me. A steely kiss, firm and demanding. He isn’t looking for my approval. He’s not even looking for my consent. His hand knots in my hair, and he kisses me as if it is his right to kiss me, whether I want it or not. No warning, no countdown. No ten-second start to get the hell out of here. At least I’d offered him that much.

I feel like our dance churned my ice cream a second time, cold nausea frothing in my stomach as his mouth reminds mine of its place.

Our foreheads rest together, our breathing evening out in the same pattern.

Outside, the world spins on.

But Ren and I are here, fixed to the spot. Anchored in the history playing out behind our closed eyelids. That night that was so happy. That first brilliant kiss, when Ren had smirked against my mouth and let me kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him. A new start. Him and me.

This feels like a new start, too.

The start of something bad.

15

Nadia

For the first time in what feels like years, I get the chance to spend a whole Saturday with Harper. Just the two of us. We never used to do that. I was always working, either a main gig or a side job, or running errands. Now it’s just us, sitting cross-legged on the living room floor and stringing together bracelets made of thick, plastic beads.

I caved in and bought her a few things. Harper has always loved the idea of arts and crafts. She took immense pride in every little project she brought home from school, from tracing her own hand into a turkey or gluing together cotton balls to make a snake. Those projects are all lost now. Probably thrown into a landfill by the landlord, tossing my old life into the dumpster with them.

We never had much of a budget for arts and crafts at home, and every walk down the toy aisle was like wandering througha museum.Look, but don’t touch.Now, she gets to make her very own AWESOME JEWELRY SETS as advertised in thick, blocky letters on the case, modeled by Photoshopped images of overenthusiastic eight-year-olds.

It’s almost therapeutic, focusing on mindlessly stringing together tiny beads and charms, while my daughter chases the one rolling across the hardwood floor.

I make a bracelet for her, and she makes one for me. Applesauce now also has a necklace that says ‘giraf’ with big plasticky blue hearts. Because she couldn’t spell Applesauce.

I am presented with my bracelet, which Harper personally stretches over my hand to make sure I wear it. Mommy is spelled correctly. I’m only a tiny bit disappointed.

“We should make one for Ren, too,” Harper gushes, digging back into the endless pit of letters and beads.

“You really seem to like him,” I say, carefully. I don’t get it. I don’t know why she’s so obsessed with him. Maybe it’s inherited.

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